A Week of Harvests (with Record Cold and Rain,) A Poem in Bellevue Literary Review, A Meditation on Boosters, Ferry Snafus and Shortages

Glenn and I at JB’s Pumpkin Farm, Redmond

A Week of Harvests (with Record Cold and Rain)

It’s been a dreary week with record cold days (with the records of cold going back to the 1800’s!) and record rain. To cheer ourselves up, we visited the local farm stands, so we had fresh corn to make salads with and sweet baby peppers and apples and squashes of all sorts. We made pear soup (don’t know if I’d recommend) and baked cranberry apple bread and generally tried to stay warm. Glenn also had a physical on Monday and his third Pfizer booster shot. By the end of the week, not just Pfizer, but all the boosters had been approved.

After our weekend plans to visit my little brother and a friend over the water were ruined by problems with the ferries, we decided to make the most of the warmer day and partial sunlight and visited a brand new but beautiful pumpkin farm near our house, JB’s Pumpkins in Redmond, and Kirkland’s Carillon Point to find roses on the water still blooming, and went grocery shopping in person (something we rarely do) at Metropolitan Market. Plentiful produce and flowers, but other shelves – frozen aisle, dry goods, paper goods – were empty. A little unnerving, like we were having a hurricane that we didn’t know about. But everyone was in a kind mood – even friendly – which seems like people responding to lowering covid levels and, of course, the nicer weather after a very dark cold week. Below is a trio of pics Glenn snapped of me frolicking in the Harvest scenery and sixty-degree day with pumpkin-colored hair and a pumpkin-hued dress. (I do not have a pumpkin-hued cane yet.)

Sylvia with Bellevue Literary review, a glass pumpkin, and a pink pillow

A New Poem, “Some Nerve: a Nocturne” in Bellevue Literary Review

Another piece of good news this week was receiving my contributor’s copy of Bellevue Literary Review’s 20th Anniversary Issue, which contained my poem about MS, “Some Nerve: A Nocturne.” This is a journal, like Image last week, that I have been sending to for over a dozen years, so the publication was definitely celebratory for me. You can see the whole issue here.

You can see a sneak peek of my poem here. (Click on it to enlarge.)

Pink mums from my yard

A Meditation on Boosters, Empty Shelves, and Ferry Troubles

So along with the wet, cold days this week, we had an onslaught of news about the vaccine boosters – which were approved, who was approved to get them, how long should we wait to get them. For Glenn, who already got his third Pfizer and his report (no big deal), it was easy. For me, it’s a little more complicated, with a bleeding disorder and a history of anaphylaxis from different kinds of shots, and since I got the J&J the first time, I’m going to have to hear from a couple of my specialists to help me decide what to do. The good news is we know I still have antibodies from my first dose of J&J, which makes it feel like less of an emergency. (None of my doctors expected me to even have antibodies this long after, so good news.) For Americans, it is a privilege to have access to third shots when people is some countries still don’t have their first one.

Wheelbarrow full of pumpkins – an image of abundance in the harvest

Since we’ve been shopping at Instacart and local farm stands, we’ve mostly missed what people have been telling us for a while: shelves are empty. Certain things that are pretty normal are in short supply, or just ungettable. My dentist cancelled my crown appointment because they couldn’t get their usual dental drugs at all. Americans are not used to doing without. The ugly scene of backed up shipping container ships is obvious if you get near Tacoma or downtown Seattle’s ports – which are strained to the point of failure. Not only that, the ferries are all understaffed, so four of the most common ferry runs – including the ones I’d used to get to my little brother or any of my Bainbridge, Kingston, or Hood Canal friends, the Bainbridge and Edmunds – were cut in half. That’s like blocking half the interstate for people who live over the water. We had been planning to visit, but Saturday morning, there were multiple hour backups on all the ferries we’d take. It was so frustrating after carefully making plans way in advance to see them ruined – but lots of people are feeling that this week, with cancelled flights, cancelled ferries, and other travel snafus. (Mercury is of course, still in Retrograde ’til tomorrow.)

Hot air balloons, October sky (rare sunshine)

It made me think about how isolated we could have been when we lived on Bainbridge or In Port Townsend – it’s the reason we don’t live there now. Because as beautiful (and more affordable) as those places were, if you can’t get to your specialist, or you want to visit friends or do some shopping off-island – it makes your quality of life less. I never liked being dependent on a drawbridge (Hood Canal) that could close at any time AND a ferry that might be unreliable even in better times. Shortages of workers – at the docks, at the ferries, at grocery stores – are visible. We don’t really go to restaurants, but I did notice a twenty-car line at our local McDonald’s for takeout and a huge “Help Wanted” poster wafting in front of the place. So the impacts of covid go beyond the deaths of people we know and love, wrecking the economy…now we’re seeing long-term problems with the supply chain, with employment, with the basics of how we used to do things. I say “used to” because clearly some things need to change. Workers are burned out and mostly underpaid. The “just-in-time” inventory models that worked pre-covid – show the dangers of running of margins of profit and supply. This really impacts people who take medicines that are hard to find – doctors in hospitals who can’t get their hands on common anti-nausea or pain drugs, and of course everyone who just can’t find their cereal/cat litter/cleanser/paper goods at the store.

On the poetry front, more literary magazines are closing for good (just heard from Foundry this week) and publishers are pushing back open submissions periods until 2022. (Oh yeah, books are also going to be in short supply – paper shortages, getting printings from overseas – all causing book supply chain problems.) And everything’s more expensive for publishers right now.

So things aren’t quite over yet. Will we need even more boosters before covid is officially considered “over?” How safe will the holidays be? Shipping container/warehouse/truck driver shortages according to the news may be backed up definitely until Christmas, and maybe for an entire year. When will I be able to get dental work or visit my brother? If you’re feeling stress and anxiety, you are probably not alone. Humans don’t operate that well with a ton of uncertainty. So I hope you’re doing your best to take care of yourselves and those around you. Get a pumpkin, take a walk on a sunny day, bake something with apples and ginger. If things are not going back to “normal” or as CNN put it  this week, “the before times” any time soon, we need to practice our deep breathing, make our plans flexible and appreciate any little joys we can find.